1. Field of the Invention
This invention concerns equipment for the so-called "manufacture" of rubber hose, natural or synthetic, but which can be vulcanized, and possibly incorporating reinforcing fabric layers, a manufacture which, as is known, is carried out by winding at least one layer and, generally, a number of layers of vulcanizable rubber tapes, possibly connected to a fabric layer, around a mandrel (or "core") generally metallic. In particular, this invention concerns equipment suited to the manufacture of rubber hose, as mentioned above, and characterized by particular technical solutions, described below, such as to permit industrial production, with conditions of high efficiency and obtaining high quality and uniform products, in tubular pieces of great length, for example in the region of 100 meters or more, in such a way as to allow the installation of hose (such as aqueducts, oil pipelines, gas pipelines) involving a proportionally very small number of joints.
More specifically, this invention concerns equipment for the industrial uses described, or equivalent, and suited to constitute an operative element or unit of a complete plant for the fabrication of pieces of hose, of great length, in natural or synthetic rubber, such a plant being subject of another contemporaneous application by the same applicant, to whose context reference is herein made, for better understanding of some technical and industrial presuppositions of this same invention.
Moreover, the above-mentioned application of this invention does not constitute a limitation of the domain of the patent application, in that the invention could find advantageous industrial use in equivalent fields, for example for the formation of vulcanizable rubber tapes, destined for various uses, for example for the winding and the manufacture of shaped bodies with a non uniform diameter and/or cross section.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The formation of pieces of great length necessarily presupposes the observance of particular technical requirements and conditions, and the solution of particular technical problems which do not appear to have been resolved totally or considered in depth by the technique of the art, according to which the industrial production is limited to obtaining much shorter pieces of hose, at most in the range of some tens of metres in length. These technical problems concern, in particular:
the support of cores of corresponding great length, in conditions such as to prevent, if not within limits of camber, practically unavoidable and non-influential, bending and flexure, under the action of the gravity which is exerted on to the mass of the core and also the material progressively wound around the said core; PA1 the action, or more exactly the rotation of the said core, without causing twisting deformations distributed along the said great length of the same; PA1 the correct and uniform carrying out of the winding operations, around the said core and along its entire working length, of rubber tapes, with or without reinforcement, and of materials possibly other than rubber (for example, tapes or metal thread, or other) used for the reinforcement of the hose produced.